Shortcut, Polly Torian, materials: traffic cones and 3d printed plastic chain, 2025
SPACE__SPACE
Smile, You’re On Camera
Polly Torian @ Space__Space
6.21-7.16
Curated by Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe
“Smile, You’re On Camera” is the debut solo exhibition of Polly Torian’s work comprised of sculpture and print/video documentation from site-specific installations and participatory public interventions. Torian’s work explores themes of observation, restriction and societal relationships to power. Her practice revolves around the subversion of found materials like traffic cones and construction fences and playfully harnesses these signs and symbols of authority to emphasize the absurdity of these constructs. Torian creates withering and cartoonish depictions of power, and decontextualized generic images of control to the point of farcicality. Fake flimsy fences, 3D printed plastic chains, latex where sturdy metal should be, and marketing aesthetics, instead of PSAs.
Torian’s work pushes the audience to question both the banalities and atrocities wielded by institutional power. This includes the university’s vocal participation in the military-industrial-complex. In “Whose Defense”, Torian commandeered a CU-Boulder LED light-box and its branding to underline its complicity in US defense operations. CU has a longstanding partnership with a key player in nuclear weapons development, Sandia National Laboratories and has a “Design for Defense” course that encourages students to make projects for military clients (Torian, 2025). It also operates the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) that develops autonomous drone and surveillance systems for military use (Torian, 2025). Torian’s work often reflects upon the expanding surveillance state and deconstructs the blurred roles between surveyor and surveyed.
As emphasized in Torian’s sculpture, “Unsuspecting and Non-consenting”, it is the constant gaze by power that functionally keeps us chained. Foucault said in the 1970s, before the proliferation and expansion of digital surveillance, “…visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them.” In our society of rampant publicity and advancing surveillance technologies, we are more visible than ever. And there is no indication that this trend will reverse. The US Department of Defense recently contracted with the data analytics firm, Palantir Technologies, to create a descriptive profile on all US citizens - our social media posts, driving and health records, banking transactions and employment histories, all compiled into one mega “smart-gaze”.
Many of these tools of power are only as strong as the propaganda that propels them, and so by appropriating this language and visibility, some of Torian’s work functions similarly to the situationist détournement - a method of hijacking preexisting imagery to unveil the ideology embedded. And sometimes this technique serves as an indecipherable imitation - you can see vestiges of graffiti on the latex sign, as the unsuspecting viewer did not realize Torian’s remix. In “Surveyor’s Pet”, Torian takes an original US army poster and remixes it to indicate what the military has become and further, how the surveillance state itself is a form of militant occupation. Similarly, street signs are often employed to warn, control or restrict us - so what does it mean to use this imagery to instruct us to “Take in the View”? It no longer feels like an invitation, but a demand. It also alludes to the commodification of the “the view”, something that has become a kind of simulacra for many of us. And it has become such immense capital to the point that private developers are lobbying big changes to public lands so that they can capitalize on “the view” of some of our most precious communal landscapes.
“Smile, You’re On Camera” transcends the confines of gallery space with work operating both in public space and archives of public interruptions. Torian recently erected the “Take in the View” red and white billboard overlooking Roosevelt National Forest in Nederland. “Staring Contest”, a QR-coded sign links to a site of city surveillance at Goose Creek. There is another version of the sign currently deployed at the park site to reflect back to the public that they are being watched. For some this is a reminder, and for some it is a revelation. In the video of the site, you can see the sign standing as a kind of cheeky act of civilian notice. It questions whether we are truly consenting to this method of discipline. And asks us, what does it look like to stare back at power?
Polly Torian is currently pursuing a BFA in sculpture and post-studio practice and minor in art history at CU-Boulder. They were born in 2004 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She has interned at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and worked under the sculptor Ana Maria Herald. Toiran writes and performs with the all-girl punk band, Diva Cup.
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Polly Torian @ Space__Space
6.21-7.16
Curated by Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe
“Smile, You’re On Camera” is the debut solo exhibition of Polly Torian’s work comprised of sculpture and print/video documentation from site-specific installations and participatory public interventions. Torian’s work explores themes of observation, restriction and societal relationships to power. Her practice revolves around the subversion of found materials like traffic cones and construction fences and playfully harnesses these signs and symbols of authority to emphasize the absurdity of these constructs. Torian creates withering and cartoonish depictions of power, and decontextualized generic images of control to the point of farcicality. Fake flimsy fences, 3D printed plastic chains, latex where sturdy metal should be, and marketing aesthetics, instead of PSAs.
Torian’s work pushes the audience to question both the banalities and atrocities wielded by institutional power. This includes the university’s vocal participation in the military-industrial-complex. In “Whose Defense”, Torian commandeered a CU-Boulder LED light-box and its branding to underline its complicity in US defense operations. CU has a longstanding partnership with a key player in nuclear weapons development, Sandia National Laboratories and has a “Design for Defense” course that encourages students to make projects for military clients (Torian, 2025). It also operates the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) that develops autonomous drone and surveillance systems for military use (Torian, 2025). Torian’s work often reflects upon the expanding surveillance state and deconstructs the blurred roles between surveyor and surveyed.
As emphasized in Torian’s sculpture, “Unsuspecting and Non-consenting”, it is the constant gaze by power that functionally keeps us chained. Foucault said in the 1970s, before the proliferation and expansion of digital surveillance, “…visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them.” In our society of rampant publicity and advancing surveillance technologies, we are more visible than ever. And there is no indication that this trend will reverse. The US Department of Defense recently contracted with the data analytics firm, Palantir Technologies, to create a descriptive profile on all US citizens - our social media posts, driving and health records, banking transactions and employment histories, all compiled into one mega “smart-gaze”.
Many of these tools of power are only as strong as the propaganda that propels them, and so by appropriating this language and visibility, some of Torian’s work functions similarly to the situationist détournement - a method of hijacking preexisting imagery to unveil the ideology embedded. And sometimes this technique serves as an indecipherable imitation - you can see vestiges of graffiti on the latex sign, as the unsuspecting viewer did not realize Torian’s remix. In “Surveyor’s Pet”, Torian takes an original US army poster and remixes it to indicate what the military has become and further, how the surveillance state itself is a form of militant occupation. Similarly, street signs are often employed to warn, control or restrict us - so what does it mean to use this imagery to instruct us to “Take in the View”? It no longer feels like an invitation, but a demand. It also alludes to the commodification of the “the view”, something that has become a kind of simulacra for many of us. And it has become such immense capital to the point that private developers are lobbying big changes to public lands so that they can capitalize on “the view” of some of our most precious communal landscapes.
“Smile, You’re On Camera” transcends the confines of gallery space with work operating both in public space and archives of public interruptions. Torian recently erected the “Take in the View” red and white billboard overlooking Roosevelt National Forest in Nederland. “Staring Contest”, a QR-coded sign links to a site of city surveillance at Goose Creek. There is another version of the sign currently deployed at the park site to reflect back to the public that they are being watched. For some this is a reminder, and for some it is a revelation. In the video of the site, you can see the sign standing as a kind of cheeky act of civilian notice. It questions whether we are truly consenting to this method of discipline. And asks us, what does it look like to stare back at power?
Polly Torian is currently pursuing a BFA in sculpture and post-studio practice and minor in art history at CU-Boulder. They were born in 2004 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She has interned at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and worked under the sculptor Ana Maria Herald. Toiran writes and performs with the all-girl punk band, Diva Cup.
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